In its first mainstream technologist hire, legal engineering company Syke has brought in Adam Dessurne – formerly head of client lifecycle management at 4C – to head and build its enterprise CLM practice.
Dessurne has a strong Salesforce background and his hire is key to Syke’s plans to bag more large, corporate enterprise work.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Syke’s founder Alistair Maiden said: “This hire is a big deal for us. Adam is our first proper technologist: he hasn’t got a legal but a Salesforce background, which reflects our move into new, bigger projects in which Salesforce integration is key. A lot of businesses have Salesforce as their platform and the legal document automation piece is on the back of that.”
At 4C Dessurne was head of the SpringCM practice, running a multi-million pound business. At Syke, which has grown to 35 members of staff, he will have equity and has been given a mandate to make further hires to build a CLM team.
Maiden told us: “What we’re realising is that as things stand, while we will remain the legal tech experts and have been able to do well at that, increasingly clients want a full enterprise solution. The legal team is not our only point of contact: we might be working with the procurement function and with systems like SAP and Salesforce. Bringing Adam on board gives us a different string to our bow in that we have that technical expertise, and he’s hiring other non-legal people to support him.”
In a statement Dessurne said: “I’m excited to join the fastest growing legal tech consultancy in the world and look forward to accelerating our enterprise CLM practice by bringing a commercial focus to contracting.
“By combining the commercial, legal, CLM and CRM experience, SYKE is perfectly placed to help more and more customers create a seamless and integrated agreement process across their businesses.”